Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetHenry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid
British Army general
Date of Birth: 10-Jun-1909
Date of Death: 11-Dec-1976
Profession: politician
Nationality: United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign: Gemini 
About Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid
- Major-General Sir Henry Joseph d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 2nd Baronet, DSO, MC, TD, DL (10 June 1909 – 11 December 1976), sometimes known as Harry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, was a British army officer, company director and politician. The eldest son of Sir Osmond d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 1st Baronet, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid went to Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford.
- On the death of his father in 1940, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid inherited Somerhill House near Tonbridge, Kent.
- He joined the Royal West Kent Regiment and the 53rd Reconnaissance Regiment, Reconnaissance Corps and was twice mentioned in dispatches.
- He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross in 1945. Following the Second World War, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid left the army and became a member of Kent County Council from 1946 to 1953.
- He was made a Freeman of the City of London and became a Justice of the Peace, Deputy Lieutenant (1949) and High Sheriff of Kent for 1953.
- His business career as a banker and bullion broker was marked by being Chairman of the Anglo-Israel Bank from 1961, and Chairman of Pergamon Press from 1969 to 1971. At the 1955 general election, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Walsall South.
- He was recruited by Duncan Sandys, then Minister of Housing, to be his Parliamentary Private Secretary but held the post for only a year. Following the 1970 general election, d'Avigdor-Goldsmid was joined in the House of Commons by his younger brother James who won the nearby seat of Lichfield and Tamworth.
- In that Parliament, Henry served as Chairman of the Select Committee on Nationalized Industries and of that on Public Expenditure.
- In 1973 he was appointed a member of the Horserace Totalisator Board.
- He stood down from Parliament at the February 1974 general election. Following the death of his 21yr old daughter Sarah at sea in 1963, Sir Henry commissioned a stained glass window at eighteenth century All Saints' Church, Tudeley.
- It was designed by the eminent artist Marc Chagall, and when it was installed in 1967, Chagall was so inspired by the effect that he committed to re-making the other eleven windows between 1969 and 1985.
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